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Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Slumdog Millionaire

A mumbai teen who grew up in the slums becomes a contestant on the indian version of who wants to be a millionaire?. He is arrested for cheating & while being interrogated events from his life history are shown which explain why he knows the answers.

Someone in the movie calls Jamal's story "bizarrely plausible" and I would have to agree. The story is basically structured in a way that if one thing had happened differently in Jamal's life he wouldn't have be able to answer all the questions on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. While nothing in life ever works like that I think it made a really nice story.

Basically the movie was exactly what I thought it would be. It was good but I wouldn't call it great. I heard from tons of people how wonderful it was but also from a few friends (who have similar tastes) who said it was good but not THE BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME, and I would have to agree with them. While I liked the movie I think The Curious Case of Benjamin Button should have gone home with the Oscar, that movie blew me away.

While I liked the structure of the story I did have problems with it. I liked the relationship between Jamal and Latika but felt when they met up towards the end of the movie we should have seen some more proof of their chemistry, I wasn't totally convinced. And the ending, the actual ending (with illustrated credits etc) that totally changed the mood of the movie and I thought was a bit uncalled for.

Slumdog Millionaire was a good movie but not really as emotionally empactful as other movies I'v seen. A lot of people are commenting on how hard some of the scenes were to watch, I was waiting for it to rise above movies like The Kite Runner, City of God, and Tsotsi, compared to those movies Slumddog Millionaire was a cake walk to watch. Also, I was disappointed that it was mostly in English. I know I'm coming off as a total film snob, sorry. I really felt the need to nitpick this one. But don't get me wrong I did enjoy and like the movie!

17 comments:

I pretty much agree with you. I thought this was a wonderful movie, but the best movie of 2008? Eh. I thought Doubt and Gran Torino were both better. I just never really got caught up in Slumdog Millionaire. Like I could get how it might disturb people, but it didn't shake me up at all.

Still haven't seen this one. I do adore A R Rahman's composing though; the soundtrack to Slumdog is amazing! He's kind of the Mozart of Indian music...at any rate, it is on my list to read AND to watch!

I just watched this movie and blogged about it ( http://enbuscadeequilibrio.blogspot.com/2009/04/slumdog-millionaire.html ) this weekend. I really loved it. I did think that the dance while the credits were rolling did completely change the mood and thought it was a bit odd (especially since Jamal had been so serious the whole movie), but I still enjoyed it.

Love all this honest talk about Slumdog. I did, in the end, want to dance. But I think some of that had to do with the fact that I didn't want to dance in many other places of the film. The acting, I thought, was wonderful. A very good point about the chemistry.

I ADORED this movie! I thought the relationship between Jamal and Latika was just beautiful. Overall, I thought it was extraordinarily emotional!I wouldn't call it the best movie of all time, either, but I did think it was great.We really do just disagree about movies, don't we?

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